It’s been nearly 5 years since I nervously posted my first brief article on the world wide web about coal tar sealers. Many recommended against it. Some applauded the effort.
Nonetheless, I was surprised that a site like this was even necessary. The facts are plain and compelling. As someone has said, the more you investigate this, the worse the prognosis.
Coal Tar Free America came after some “blog coaching” from a friend, digesting the book Google Blogger for Dummies, real world journalistic advice from a retired, big-city beat reporter and some key suggestions about web computing languages from another colleague.
I’d love to do an infographic summarizing all this, but here are some bare bones numbers.
- Americans under a ban when blog started in 2010: 2 million
- 290 articles on Coal Tar Free America
- over 230,000 pageviews of Coal Tar Free America
- over 48,000 visitors
- hijacked domains from industry: 3
- signatures on a petition to ban it nationwide: 9,155
- 31 YouTube videos with 13,340 views
- 1,133 Twitter tweets
- 125 Twitter followers
- over 4,000 views of 55 documents on Scribd
- income generated from Coal Tar Free America: $0.00
- estimated number of pounds of toxins prevented from entering the environment: over 15,000,000 lbs
- health and environmental benefits: unknown
- cigarette equivalent of toxins eliminated: 18 trillion cigarettes
- Americans under a ban in 2015: 17.5 million
Of course the credit for these accomplishments goes to many citizens, environmentalists, government staff and elected officials. This site was a factor as an aggregator and distiller of information with a little persuasion thrown in.
Any predictions for 2020?